Jessica and Jannelle didn't know where the fire was located.Kept repeating " Fire in the east bay". This is bad. Cellphones don't work? "Fire in the east bay" - If I were the news director I would resign.mycalbe

I listened attentively to 2 hours of radio coverage that night: KCBS had solid reporting, but it was pretty staid: a lot of reading of press releases and summarizing facts -- which they mostly seem to have gotten right. KGO was a lot more colorful, with animated excited air personalities urging callers to relay their stories by phone -- and the results were a good use of the immediacy of radio and and on-air phones; the "crowd-sourced" reporting was uneven but fun to listen to, often informative, though sometimes inaccurate. The on-site reporting was largely limited to following the Chevron PR flack around with a microphone, and that young lady was not going to be moved off-script no mater what they asked (though they did try).

The one thing that was missing from both stations, amid the constantly-repeated instructions about "shelter in place," was information for those of us who live in the area, but were not at home: Should we shelter out of place? Should we drive home? What? The issue was not mentioned at all on either station, so much as I heard.

Making our own choice, my wife and I elected to rendezvous at a friends house far from home, so that we would avoid both the smoke and the sirens, which were persistent and... loud, according to our neighbors who were at home. When we returned home the following afternoon, all was well at our house.